The Truth is Out There: Whom do you trust?

Ted Schwartz is an author from a previous generation whose books you can find in libraries and used book stores. Among his works were three for Amos Press (publishers of Coin World, Linns and Scotts). In the Schwartz book "Coins as Living History" Coin World editor Bill Gibbs handwrote a warning that the work was poorly researched and was not to be used by the staff as background for articles. No such caveats were written into the other two books.

In the thread here on which coin sites you like, I clicked up www.worldcoincatalog.com, which claims: "Coins might had facilitated a move from cumbersome barter system of trade to simple system based on the money. Others speculate that they were stuck as offerings to the Gods in their religious ceremonies. Lydian coins found in Ionian mainland temple of Greek goddess Artemis (Romans called her - Diana) during archeological excavation in 1951 gives credence to such speculation." This is wrong in every claim. The most commonly accepted theory is that coins were invented as bonus payments to mercenaries -- more like medals of honor than a medium of indirect barter. The Artemision at Ephesus was first excavated by researchers from Oxford and the British Museum in before 1903. The coins from that site come from eight separate deposits that are given one context for convenience and even today, not everything about them is known.

Basically, you have to pick your way carefully through the facts in numismatics as with any other field. What you choose to believe depends on your standards. How you apply those standards is perhaps a tougher call. Yesterday, I interviewed for a magazine article a man who has a string of patents on machines to plate small objects such as those components inside your cellphone. He can gold plate a red blood cell. When he said "centrifugal force" I coughed, but did not correct him. It was not important. However, I would not let that go by in a science class.

I have highly recommend TWISTED TAILS by Robert R. Van Ryzin (Krause, 1995) as a start for collectors of US Numismatics.

 

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Good book, easy read and inexpensive too.

 

This. So, the coins we have had in this last 2500 years are not the money.

Ps: This is the oldest thread here.

 

Peter who? He is the owner of this site? (how much should I pay him for using here?)

 

dated August 12, 2002?

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/hey-read-this-before-posting-here-auction-listing-forum-rules.2/

 

took me all of 30 seconds. I'll live!

 

is this it...

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/welcome-newbies.10/

I click on Peter's ID, profile, postings, scroll to bottom and click on find all threads, go to last page of threads found, scroll down and click on "find older messages"...repeat until no additional threads are found.

 

*edit to remove bad link*

 

I am reading this posted 15 years ago

and, reading this after 15 years

giving us "Error". (I thought Corgi was expert in such things.)

Edited to say: Trust Corgi!

 

I was a lot smaller when this thread was started! Oddly enough it is also the year I found my first wheat penny that got me interested in coins.

 

Considering the source, a sizable donation by any standard is in order...

 

Ok, I can pay for the paragraph in the Original Post above which I quoted. Will I also pay for the posts Corgi posted? (Btw, I closed one of my eyes when reading his posts.)

Jokes aside. I remember the forums of mid 1990s (with Matt's script wwwboard textstyle forums). Posts then were with much thoughts/knowledges/info like this one in OP even though internet speed was slow and forum softwares were primitive. Have a look at this old OP in this thread. It is questioning basic things about the coin. For example, this

was a talk of 15 years ago, but, now, today, if you open any website on the net about the coin, almost all of them repeat the same things "coin has been used as exchange medium, as money form, etc etc" which contradicts the discussions decades ago. More questioning talks in old days while today more cliches/repeats like parrots. What has happened in last decades on the forums? Fatique? due to flooding info? I think so. People have lost trusts more than before. There must be correlation between trust and coin. (anyway, I'll write some about this in "coin with/out numeral" thread, later.)

 

How come. I checked his profile, he was last seen in 2003. (Anyway, maybe, he has another nickname.) If he is viewing here, I'd like him to make a further comment on that he said 15 years ago:

I've not seen such a comment on the coin websites. What they are saying/repeating is that; coins were invented as a commerce tool, as a medium of exchange and such things that don't fit my logic. That "Marotta" said (bonus payments, medals) fits better. However, it should be emphasized here that the coins we are talking here are the coins of last 2500 years. Earlier coins, that's, coins of, say, 10,000 years that we don't know maybe was different than the coins of 2500 years we know and we have. All these coins I see on the net, from today to c500BC are belong to that category, coins as bonus payments and medals, that's, they are not "money" really.

 

From here, I went to his blog, and found his this article, about "Challenge Coins",
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com.tr/2016/09/challenge-coins.html
where he says:

"... According to numismatist Martin J. Price, monetary coinage was invented about 600 BCE as a form of bonus payments to Greek mercenaries. “[As] bonus payments, the coins are more akin to gifts (or medals) than to coins as we know them.” (“Thoughts on the beginning of coinage,” in Studies in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson, Cambridge University Press, 1983)... "

Now, it is clear, he shared his opinion of Martin J. Price in the book/article "Thoughts on the beginning of coinage" by Philip Grierson in 1983.

Anyway. After all, I see that I'm not alone in seeing all these coins as non-moneys.

Ps: Thanks for keeping this old thread in the archive.